Cloudmark Security Blog

Mobile malware for bitcoin mining, one of our 2014 predictions

At the end of last year when we looked at our Messaging Security Predictions for 2014, one of the threats we thought we might see is malware on mobile devices devoted to Bitcoin mining.

We may have to wait until the end of 2014 to see if our other predictions come true, but this one was validated last week. A recent blog post by Lookout describes malicious Google Play apps that advertise themselves as innocuous wallpaper apps but mine for Bitcoins in the background.

One nice thing about the malware is that it won’t completely drain your battery. Lookout says:

“In order to avoid this, BadLepricon makes sure that the battery level is running at over 50 percent capacity, the display is turned off, and the phone [has] network connectivity.”

So if your phone’s battery is dead, you can’t entirely blame it on that Epic Smoke Live Wallpaper app you installed last week.